


Four Times The Mechs Killed Each Other, And One Time They Didn't

by spacepirate



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: 4+1, Gen, but also it's about the found family, i mean they just kill each other in stupid ways i don't know what else to tell you, idk just have fun, there are Deaths but they're not super explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:35:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22673413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacepirate/pseuds/spacepirate
Summary: When you're immortal, death doesn't have meaning.  Neither do boundaries or common sense.
Comments: 20
Kudos: 232
Collections: Stowaways' Shenanigans





	Four Times The Mechs Killed Each Other, And One Time They Didn't

That had been the last straw, and Jonny D’Ville had concocted a plan.

Living in the close confines of the Aurora meant he knew the Doc’s schedule down to a tee. You don’t notice someone has such a well-kept routine until you live with them on a spaceship for centuries. Then you learn every little idiosyncrasy. Every little odd habit.

Every walk taken over lunch time, always passing the airlock.

He laid his plan as… carefully as possible. Subtlety wasn’t his strong point, and neither was patience. Once he realized he had a very viable option, he decided to act. The next day.

Around the time the Doc would be leaving the bridge he took his leave. The fuckin’ boxes by the airlock would be a perfect hiding spot. She wouldn’t even know he was there.

He heard the click-clack of shoes on the metal floor approaching but he didn’t dare peek out to see if it was the Doc. He readied himself to bulrush her.

In a blurry instant he grabbed the Doc, slammed the release button and shoved her out into the vacuum of space. As he stood, chest heaving, peering out the window of the now-shut airlock. He had a brief moment of relief, quickly ended by realizing it wasn’t the Doc’s betrayed face that stared back at him in horror.

It was the Drumbot.

“Oh, _fuck_.”

\--

Ashes elbowed Tim with a smirk on their face. “Have you seen Raphaella yet today? She’s all kinds of worked up.”

“What’s it now?” Tim asked, with the tone of someone who already knew exactly what it was.

“Who took that tray of reconstituted cookies from the lab?” they heard Raphaella shout across the ship. 

Tim winked at Ashes and started off towards the bridge. They grabbed his arm.

“You ate something,” they said incredulously, “from the lab? Fuck, why would you think that’s a good idea?”

“I was hungry!”

Ashes snorted as they let him go. “You’re going to die, Tim.”

As the day wore on, he tried to ignore the vague sense of… illness… growing in his stomach. He told himself it was just what Ashes had said getting to him, but it got progressively worse, the dizziness overwhelming. By the time everyone was heading to bed, Tim collapsed on the floor of the bridge, laying flat on his back.

Jonny’s face appeared above him. “You look like shit.”

“Feel like it,” Tim groaned.

“I’m guessing you ate Raphaella’s lab cookies.”

The room was spinning. Did he have legs? He’d lost those once but they’d grown back eventually. “Innocent until proven guilty, Jonny!” He was dimly aware of the boot prodding into his side. “Don’t tell Raph?”

“Too late!” Raphaella said, cheery face on the opposite side of him. “How do you feel?”

“I think I’m dying,” Tim said. “Jonny has three eyes.”

“There is a significant chance you _are_ dying. You ate samples of a hostile bacteria I was growing. The cookies were a perfect nutrient agar,” Raphaella said. She bent down to look at him closer. “Hmm. Well, hopefully it’s not very painful. Scale of one to ten, what’s your current pain level?”

“My huh?”

“Your-” Raphaella was cut short by a very loud, and very clear, deep exhale. His head flopped to one side.

Jonny kicked him in the ribs, then looked at Raph and shrugged when there was no reaction. “You found who ate your germy cookies.”

Raphaella folded her arms. “I suppose I did.”

\--

When they first found the Toy Soldier, they had to learn the extent of its obedience somehow. It’s just that none of their ideas were good.

“We’re immortal- I’ll be fine,” Marius, not a doctor, said as the Toy Soldier bridle-carried him towards the ship’s engine.  
“Marius you have got to be kidding me,” Nastya said. Her voice was thick with contempt. “Aurora does not like this.”

Marius just laughed. “It’s a ship, Nastya. Doesn’t really matter. And who knows- maybe the Toy Soldier won’t be able to do it!”

“I doubt it. It is a soldier and seems capable of murder,” Nastya argued.

“Is it murder if I come back?”

The marching of the wooden man brought them through the bridge, past the vacant Doctor Carmilla’s laboratory, and the procession grew out of morbid curiosity. 

“Why is the Toy Soldier holding Marius?” Ivy asked as the hoarde passed her library, sticking her head out and holding an octokitten in her arms.

Nastya scoffed. “He told it to throw him into the engine.”

Ivy was silent for a moment. “That carries a… ninety-eight percent chance of his death.”

“That’s the point!” Marius called. “See what the limits on it are. Think of it as an experiment!”

That got Ivy’s attention, and she set down the octokitten inside her room and hurried after the rest.

They picked up Tim and Ashes towards the end, and found Jonny already waiting at the door of the engine room.

“You’re not going to stop me, are you?” Marius asked him. “Because this is in the name of science and as a _doctor_ -”

“One, you’re not a doctor, and two, why the hell would I stop this? Since when have I _ever_ stopped a petty act of violence?”

Marius craned to look at the Toy Soldier. “You heard the first mate- onwards!”

Jonny held the door open, and then shut it behind the two, while the rest stood outside the door, listening carefully.

There was a shout and a loud grinding sound that lasted longer than any of them would’ve liked to hear it for. The Toy Soldier opened the door again, holding a bloodied metal arm and a pointed helmet.

“It actually did it,” Ivy said in mixed tones of amazement and disgust. Off to the side, Nastya patted the hull of the ship, whispering something to her in Cyberian.

The Toy Soldier handed off the arm and the helmet to Jonny and Ivy respectively with a wide toothy grin, and marched back to its quarters.

\--

Ivy set her new book down, looking at everyone else lounging around eating breakfast. “I just learned something interesting.”

Ashes flicked their cigarette. “Yeah, what’s that?”

“You can only go about five days without sleep before you start to experience hallucinations and some other rather nasty things,” Ivy said. “So mostly-”

“I can stay up longer than five days,” Jonny interrupted.

“Bull _shit_ ,” Ashes said. “If you can stay up for five days, I can stay up longer.”

Jonny stood up, leaning on the table. “You know what? It’s a bet, then.”

Ashes spat into their hand and shook his. “Deal.”

The first few days were fine. They assumed maybe due to their Mechanisms it wouldn’t be as bad as it was for mortals.

By the fourth day, things were starting to get rough, and the rest of the crew had started to hedge their own bets. Most of the bets were on Ashes- they were a force to be reckoned with when it came to winning bets. Only two were placed on Jonny, and that was _after_ someone watched him crush up caffeine tablets and put them in his coffee. Regular Jonny was already a handful, and overtired and hypercaffeinated Jonny was… frankly too much.

They didn’t see Ashes outside of the bridge much. They simply sat with a matchbook, lighting one and letting it burn down to the fingertips before dropping it to the floor.

Until late that night, when there was a loud knock on Tim’s door. He fumbled blindly for his eyes and popped them back in. The room was suddenly illuminated and he went to open the door.

Ashes was standing there, dark circles under their bloodshot eyes.

“I need you to kill me,” they said, before Tim had time to ask why they were there.

“Sorry, what?”

They handed their pistol to him. “You’re not a bad shot, just get it over with.”

“I mean, I will, but… why?”

“I’m so tired. And I _cannot_ lose this bet. If you kill me, I didn’t technically fall asleep so I win,” Ashes said. They poked the handle of the gun towards him. “Hurry up.”

Tim sighed and took it from them. “Here? They’re gonna realize you asked me to.”

“Shit, you’re right,” Ashes nodded. “Right, my place then. I’ll just hop into bed and then we’ll be all good.”

“The things I do for my friends,” Tim said. He followed them to their room and let themself get tucked into their bunk.

He winced as he did it, and then threw the gun under the bed. 

“Christ, well, my night got weird,” Tim muttered. As soon as he had his eyes out again, there was another knock.

“Are you kidding me? You’re back already?” Tim said as he fumbled with the door and a single eye. He opened it up. It wasn’t Ashes there, though, it was Jonny.

“Get your other eye in,” he said, holding onto the barrel of the gun and holding it out to him. “I can’t let Ashes win this bet, and _you_ better not fuck this up.”

\--

Despite all of this, they didn’t spend all their time killing each other. There were nights when they would land on some backwater planet, get off the ship, and see what stars they could recognize, catalogues the places they’d been, far off in the night sky. Passing around a bottle between them, whiskey labelled in a language they didn’t read. Silent and content in each other’s company.

It wouldn’t last. The next morning someone would start the cycle anew with a poisoned tea or a well-placed bullet, but until then, it was just them huddled against the Aurora, looking into space, dreaming of what would come next in their journeys.


End file.
